Susan Bishop Crispell tells a delicious story about love and magic in her new novel, DREAMING IN CHOCOLATE (St.Martin’sGriffin), which is filled with yummy sweet recipes and hot cocoa. Yum! Yum!

Penelope Dalton runs a chocolate cafe with her mother. In addition, to delightful tasty treats, the shop is filled with an endless supply of magic. Penelope does her best to give her daughter, Ella everything she wants. But what Ella wants, is a daddy. But not just any dad, she wants Noah Gregory, who unknown to Ella is her biological father, who left town eight years ago. He’s popped back into town for a family emergency and he’s as charming as ever. What Ella also sees in Noah is a husband for her mommy.

Noah broke Penelope’s heart eight years ago, but now part of her wonders if she made the right decision to keep the truth from him. The other, more practical part, is she’s determined to protect Ella from the same heartbreak. Now Penelope must give in to her fate or face a future of regrets.

DREAMING IN CHOCOLATE by Susan Bishop Crispell is a heartwarming story of love, hot chocolate, and one little girl’s wish for her mother.

*****

Susan’s words:

I’m not one of those writers who’s been scribbling down stories since I could hold a pencil. I didn’t read constantly growing up (blasphemy, I know!), and I can still be found in public without a book tucked into my purse (again with the blasphemy!).

I am, however, the kind of writer who lives for the imaginative spark that introduces me to a new character or story idea that pushes me to turn everyday life into something magical.

I have a B.F.A. in creative writing from The University of North Carolina – Wilmington. I live and write near Wilmington, NC with my husband, Mark, and our literary-named cat.

You can find me on Twitter at @SBCrispell.

Thanks to BookSparks and St. Martin’s Griffin, we have one copy of DREAMING IN CHOCOLATE to giveaway. Just tell us what your favorite chocolate treat is.

Susan Bishop Crispell tells a delicious story about love and magic in her new novel, DREAMING IN CHOCOLATE (St.Martin’sGriffin), which is filled with yummy sweet recipes and hot cocoa. Yum! Yum!

Penelope Dalton runs a chocolate cafe with her mother. In addition, to delightful tasty treats, the shop is filled with an endless supply of magic. Penelope does her best to give her daughter, Ella everything she wants. But what Ella wants, is a daddy. But not just any dad, she wants Noah Gregory, who unknown to Ella is her biological father, who left town eight years ago. He’s popped back into town for a family emergency and he’s as charming as ever. What Ella also sees in Noah is a husband for her mommy.

Noah broke Penelope’s heart eight years ago, but now part of her wonders if she made the right decision to keep the truth from him. The other, more practical part, is she’s determined to protect Ella from the same heartbreak. Now Penelope must give in to her fate or face a future of regrets.

DREAMING IN CHOCOLATE by Susan Bishop Crispell is a heartwarming story of love, hot chocolate, and one little girl’s wish for her mother.

*****

Susan’s words:

I’m not one of those writers who’s been scribbling down stories since I could hold a pencil. I didn’t read constantly growing up (blasphemy, I know!), and I can still be found in public without a book tucked into my purse (again with the blasphemy!).

I am, however, the kind of writer who lives for the imaginative spark that introduces me to a new character or story idea that pushes me to turn everyday life into something magical.

I have a B.F.A. in creative writing from The University of North Carolina – Wilmington. I live and write near Wilmington, NC with my husband, Mark, and our literary-named cat.

You can find me on Twitter at @SBCrispell.

Thanks to BookSparks and St. Martin’s Griffin, we have one copy of DREAMING IN CHOCOLATE to giveaway. Just tell us what your favorite chocolate treat is.

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THOUGHTS on THIS ‘n THAT has another book and stuffed animal in the GREEN KIDS CLUB to tell you about so you can share books and learn with the little ones in your life. (aged 5-7)

What is the Green Kids Club?

Green Kids Club is designed to teach young children the importance of environmental stewardship through picture books. The series was developed to teach children the importance of protecting habitats, to sustain ecosystems, animal and ultimately human life. Difficult environmental issues such as poaching, habitat, encroachment, etc. are part of our stories.

Victor, Maya and Tiago are the main characters in our Green Kids Club Series. In our first story, The Green Spring, the children receive the power to talk to animals by drinking water from a magic spring. In this story, the Grand Council of animals select Victor and Maya to drink water from this spring and from here help to preserve and protect our planet Earth. Kids from all over the world also end up drinking water from the Green Spring and together they help Victor and Maya teach others to protect the animals and their homes. The adventures take them all over the world, exploring new cultures and learning about protecting and preserving the environment and the animals that depend on you.

TODAY we’re heading out on a “Desert Mirage” with Maya and her brother Victor.

The Grand Council has visited Maya in a dream to warn her about the disappearing water in the Southwest of the United States, particularly Arizona. Maya and her brother, Victor meet their friend, Alo and find out that there is a Ghost Horse that has helped the animals of the land. While taking a ride through the arroyo’s of the area, the children realize that the animals and lands have been impacted by a drought. Suddenly a huge rainstorm hits and the children are swept away in an arroyo. Will the Ghost Horse come out and save them?

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In Camille Pagan’s new novel, WOMAN LAST SEEN IN HER THIRTIES (LakeUnionPublishing), fifty-three, Maggie Harris has a good marriage and two mostly happy children, until she doesn’t. Her husband Adam, decides he’s not in love with Maggie anymore and walks out. Maggie proceeds to implode, and realize she’s basically become invisible taking care of others for the past thirty years.

Then she learns she and Adam had an upcoming anniversary trip planned to Italy, and she’s not going to cancel just because her soon to be ex-loser husband doesn’t want to go, because he has some young hottie.

When she returns, she relocates with the help of a woman she met on the trip and proceeds to peel away all the negative thoughts and fears she’s accumulated over the last three decades – falling air conditioners, the IRS, identity theft, skydiving, and airbag recalls.

She slowly begins to rebuild her life, a new career, even a romance. But when a new crisis hits, she must decide how much of the new woman she’s become she’s willing to keep.

I loved WOMAN LAST SEEN IN HER THIRTIES. I appreciated Camille writing about a woman in her fifties showing that life doesn’t stop after one’s thirties, including traumatic events. Women today are aging gracefully and living full lives with careers and romances until they can’t. And no one is going to stop us.

I fell in love with Maggie. She had just the right amount of neurosis and joie de vivre to come out on top. I believe readers will connect with Maggie, too.

I’ve been telling stories as long as I’ve been able to hold a pen, but I didn’t write a novel until about ten years ago. I had just given birth to my first child and a dear friend was battling terminal cancer; I guess you could say life’s big questions were on my mind. I began writing at night after my daughter went to bed, and after many tough but exhilarating months, completed the draft that would become my debut, The Art of Forgetting. The experience changed me—even before I typed “The End,” I knew I wanted to do it again (and again and again).

Still, it took me several years to write another novel that made it to print. A cross-country move, the birth of my second child, and a heavy dose of second book self doubt had me ready to throw in the towel. Then I sat down and began working on a story just for myself, which put the joy back in my writing. Less than a year after handing that book, Life and Other Near-Death Experiences, to my agent, it became the #1 all-category Kindle bestseller and remained there for more than three of the first four weeks after its publication. Life was recently optioned for film by Jessica Chastain’s Freckle Films.

Not long after Life was published, I was plodding along on a new draft when I suddenly had the idea for my third novel, Forever is the Worst Long Time. I knew it was supposed to be my next book—and luckily my publisher, Lake Union, agreed. Forever was published at the beginning of 2017, and was an RT Reviews top pick and named a best book of the month by Amazon, InStyle, and RealSimple. This year, I’m thrilled to introduce you to Woman Last Seen in Her Thirtiesand its protagonist, Maggie Halfmoon, who was a delight to write. I just finished my fifth novel (and hope to be able to share more news about it with you soon!).

When I’m not at my computer, you’ll find me with my nose in a book, running after my two kids and our nutty dog, or planning my next trip (most likely to Puerto Rico, where my husband was born and raised). After nearly a decade in Brooklyn and a stint in Chicago, my family and I live in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

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One is playing a long game. But which one?

New York Times bestselling author, Laura Lippman returns this spring with SUNBURN (HarperCollins), a novel of psychological suspense. It centers on a pair of lovers with the best intentions and the worst luck: two people locked in a game of cat and mouse. But instead of rules, this game has dark secrets, forbidden desires, inevitable betrayals—and cold-blooded murder.

Inspired by James M. Cain’s masterpieces The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and Mildred Pierce. SUNBURN is a sizzling modern noir from the incomparable Laura Lippman.

It will no doubt be sizzling in beach bags and seen being read at the shore and poolside this spring and summer by old and new Lippman fans.

Purchase Links

About Laura Lippman

Since LAURA LIPPMAN’s debut, she has won multiple awards and critical acclaim for provocative, timely crime novels set in her beloved hometown of Baltimore. Laura has been nominated for more than fifty awards for crime fiction and won almost twenty, including the Edgar. Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Now a perennial New York Times bestselling author, she lives in Baltimore and New Orleans with her family.

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THE ITALIAN PARTY (St.MartinPress) by Christina Lynch was so different from what I expected. It turned out to be a delightful read about husbands, wives, secrets, lies, the CIA, communism, prosecco and delicious pasta dishes, all set in Tuscany – 1950’s Sienna, Italy.

Newly married, Scottie and Michael Messina arrive in Sienna under the false pretense of Michael selling new Ford tractors to farmers in the rich countryside of Tuscany. Scottie’s unaware Michael is really a closeted gay man with a lover in Rome and working for the CIA to stop to threat of communism in Italy. Michael’s unaware Scottie’s pregnant with another man’s baby and has some other secrets she hasn’t shared.

When Scottie’s Italian teacher—a teenage boy with secrets of his own—disappears, her search for him leads her to discover other, darker truths about herself, her husband and her country. Michael’s dedication to saving the world from communism…

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“I pressed the pause button on life, and then lost the remote.”

Paige is digging in and trying to start her life over by literally digging up her backyard in Lorreta Nyhan’s, new novel, DIGGING IN (LakeUnionPublishing). I fell in love with Loretta after reading her previous novel, ALL THE GOOD PARTS (LakeUnionPublishing) several years ago. Once again she takes a tough subject – grief – and deals with it in a smart and upbeat way.

Paige is struggling to get her life back on track after the death of her husband in a car accident. Jesse was/is the love of her life since childhood. She’s also dealing with a teenage boy, Trey, who refuses to get in the driver’s seat in driver’s ed, even though it’s mandatory for graduation. And the company she has worked for the past seventeen years, and planned on retiring from, has completely uprooted there way of doing business and Paige may lose her job.

Paige deals with her struggles by one night deciding to dig up her backyard, to the chagrin of her nosy neighbors, who have their own issues. Then she decides to plant one of the biggest gardens ever seen, without any experience.

“I’m trying to bring me back”

Loretta Nyham never fears taking on tough issues, and in DIGGING IN she’s on the edge. We grow to love Paige, her son, Trey and array of other characters who are well-developed. Paige is completely relatable and her manner of dealing with grief is perfectly plausible.

I was intrigued by the cover and it’s bright primary colors; a professional woman, dressed in her LBD, armed and ready to take on gardening had me hooked at first glance.

*****

LORETTA’S OWN WORDS:

I was a reader before I was a writer, devouring everything I could get my hands on, including the backs of cereal boxes and the instructions booklet for building the Barbie dream house. Later, my obsession with reading evolved into an absolute need to write. After college, I wrote for national trade magazines, taught writing to college freshmen, and eventually found the guts to try fiction.

‘In addition to DIGGING IN,’ I’m the author of All the Good Parts (Lake Union, 2016). Previous published novels include I’ll Be Seeing You and Empire Girls (MIRA Books).

When I’m not writing, I can be found knitting, baking, and doing all kinds of things my high school self would have found hilarious.

I live in the Chicago area with my two teenage boys.

*****

Thanks to Amazon First Reads for a chance to read this delightful novel.

DIGGING IN will be published April 1st. Make sure to pre-order your copy now!